We are extremely glad to observe that the writer in the _Edinburgh Review_ has had the proper spirit to refute--and he does it most satisfactorily--this wretched and scandalous attack upon the memory of a royal lady. It was not perhaps to be expected that he should do more; but what sort of imputation does his vindication of the Queen leave upon the character of her assailant? This is not a matter which should be passed over lightly; and for our part we feel bound to say that we can conceive no spectacle more pitiable or humiliating, than that of an old man committing with a palsied hand to paper the prurient rumours of the past. Had the evidence against Marie Antoinette been ten times stronger than it was, honour and the feelings of a gentleman should have deterred any one even from repeating the accusation. But the late Lord Holland entertained no such scruples. His witness, at second-hand, is the very woman who wrote _Mémoires sur la Vie Privée de Marie Antoinette, Reine de France_; and in these memoirs of hers there is not even an inuendo against the honour of the unfortunate Queen. But Madame Campan cannot so escape. Lord Holland was determined that she should, in some way or other, assist in blackening the reputation of her royal mistress; and accordingly we are treated to the following ingenuous note:--
"Madame Campan's delicacy and discretion are not only pardonable, but praiseworthy; but they are disingenuous, and her Memoirs conceal truths well known to her, though such as would have been unbecoming a lady to reveal. She was, in fact, the _confidante_ of Marie Antoinette's amours. These amours were not numerous, scandalous, or degrading, but they _were amours_. Madame Campan, who lived beyond the Restoration, was not so mysterious in conversation on these subjects as she is in her writings. She acknowledged to persons, who have acknowledged it to me, that she was privy to the intercourse between the Queen and the Duc de Coigny."
And this is evidence upon which we are to condemn Marie Antoinette! I had it--says this distinct and confident accuser--from other people, who had it from the waiting-woman, although the waiting-woman knew better than to write it down! And who were the people "who acknowledged it to me"--what was their character and station--what was their repute for credibility? Lord Holland durst not in his lifetime have said as much of the father or mother of any man of his acquaintance upon such a pretext for authority. It is altogether the very worst instance of a wanton attack which we ever remember to have met with: it has but one parallel in history--the famous warming-pan legend, by means of which Lord Holland's political predecessors sought to bastardise the son of James II. But the motive which dictated the earlier fiction is wanting in the case of the later one.